In this paper, I will discuss Husserl’s notion of categorial intuition, which is presented in his sixth Logical Investigation. I suggest that Husserl formulates categorial intuition in order to show that there are components of our epistemic judgements which are not reducible to the sensory perceptions that accompany those judgements, i.e., to our empirical psychological states or individual mental processes. Specifically, the ‘components’ of our epistemic judgements that Husserl recognizes as a problem for the model of sensuous intuition are what he calls categorials. Categorials are commonly expressed by terms in our judgements like ‘is’ ‘not’ ‘or’ ‘and’ and ‘if’, which, importantly, we use meaningfully in everyday speech. Categorials pose a problem for the model of sensuous intuition, insofar as categorials have no apparent “objective correlate”.

So this is the method of philosophical progress!

1. Someone “gives an account” of something. The account is admired because it substitutes the known (or distinct) for the unknown (or obscure). An appealing account is both synoptic and somewhere between highly plausible and indefeasible.
2. A good model propagates across minds and attracts critique. Eventually, a contradiction or ellipsis is found.
3. The original theory is then amended. Sometimes, amending a theory leads to new and surprising consequences.

The most famous example these days is the “transition” from Hume to Kant. Kant’s theory of experience in CPR is Hume’s—plus two teeny little additions that Hume ought to agree with and that, at first glance, ought to have proportionally teeny consequences. These premises are unity and judgmental richness.

The first is, “Hume … we agree that the epistemic subject is a unity. Not talking about the real occult substance one. You’re right—we can’t know jack about that one. Hell, like you said, its guts could get replaced every nanosecond and we’d be none the wiser. Just talking about the knower, you know, the receiver of the propositional attitude that has a many-part meaning fest all-at-once. We agree that a fact has unity for a knower, no?”

The second is, “Hume … would you agree that the subject–predicate relation is not simple logical conjunction? Can we agree that the intentionality that we actually project, what my descendants will call categorial intuition, projects a non-empirical but forceful structuring? That there are transcendental qualia having to do with the way empirical point-moments are interrelated, and perhaps ‘unified’?”

Hume said that only (momentary) sense data can be known with certainty. “There is a cat on the mat” is a plausible judgment, but is it certain? No, Hume says, not after Descartes and the representationalist turn. But we can be certain that, when having the experience of seeing a green patch, that we are having an experience of seeing a green patch. So when we have an experience of “a real physical cat is really on a real physical mat in the physical 3-space outside my head,” we “can really only know for sure” that we are (1) getting certain pixels values in certain places and (2) that our mind is positing coherence and other physics-denoting links in its usual attitude of naive realism.

Look at the except above, I wonder …

Of all the insufficiencies in Hume’s account, which was Kant’s primary target?

• The possibility of a distinct self — For PFS, it was the power of self-ascription. Hume admits there is an identical “I” ranging over a plurality of experiences. But Hume’s reduction (to sense contents and accidental association) cannot account for this. We must be able to separate the two realms of “subjective order” and “objective order” in order for the epistemic subject to enjoy distinction enough for us to even refer to it.
• Real vs seeming — We make judgments with a serious objective attitude. This is similar to the above. This is Kant’s “judgments of perception” vs “judgments of experience” distinction, and Kant says that Hume cannot account for it.
• Logical operators — Is the PNC strong enough to account for the various logical operators and all they do? The kinds of com-position yielded by AND, NOT, OR, IF, SOME, and ALL—do these really reduce just to PNC?

… and more.

In any case, this is a (the?) method of progress:

1. Account A.
2. Noticing that A fails to account for fact a.
3. Account B.
4. … and so on.